Whitehorse council votes for proposed changes to permitting, inspection processes for builders

Whitehorse city council has pushed forward proposed improvements on how the city handles building permits and does inspections — but not without some opposition. 

Councillors and the mayor voted unanimously on Monday to pass amendments to the city's Building and Plumbing Bylaw through first and second reading, though one more reading is required before the changes actually come into effect. 

Key amendments include giving builders up to 12 months after getting a permit from the city to begin construction; currently, the city cancels permits if builders don't start work within six months. Other changes include reducing building permit application fees for certain types of housing, requiring separate inspections for a building's framing and insulation and vapour barrier, and the introduction of "service level targets" — essentially, non-binding timelines — for things like processing permit applications.

The amendments stem from a report the city commissioned on the building permit backlog it faced last year. The city, at one point, was taking eight weeks to process applications, a wait that builders said threatened to derail their seasons. The report recommended a number of changes to the city's processes.  

Whitehorse builder John Vogt, however, expressed concerns at Monday night's council meeting about the effectiveness and practicality of two of the proposed changes, including the introduction of service level targets. 

"Clear and consistent timelines for getting permits and inspections allows us builders to build quicker and more efficiently, so while I'm happy that the city is proposing to implement service standards, the lack of any potential enforcement of them means that they aren't currently worth the paper that they're written on," he said. 

2 inspections not always needed, builder and councillor say

Vogt also took aim at the requirement for separate framing and insulation-and-vapour barrier inspections. While he agreed that two inspections are sometimes necessary — it can be difficult to access a frame when it's already been covered in certain kinds of insulation, for example — Vogt said there are also situations where that isn't needed, and requiring them anyway would unnecessarily increase inspectors' workloads. 

Instead, Vogt suggested that the city eliminate the insulation and vapour barrier inspection altogether. The city already requires builders to submit energy efficiency reports before a building can be occupied, he pointed out, and the existence of a report would indicate that the insulation and vapour barriers have been installed to standard. 

"Eliminating the extra insulation [and] vapour inspection would free up the inspectors, make it easier for the city to meet their service standards without sacrificing the quality of the homes being built, and would also help speed up the construction of homes," he said.

Coun. Dan Boyd, meanwhile, expressed concerns with the Building and Plumbing Bylaw overall later in the meeting, describing it as "quite old" and containing language that was "out of sync" with other jurisdictions. 

"When things are running well, it's not so important, and that's maybe why the bylaw, you know, didn't really get much update over the last 20-something years," he said. "But it's tougher sledding out there these days, and these tools, these rules, are critically important." 

Boyd said he hoped that there would be more work to further update the bylaw ahead. 

Boyd also disagreed with the amendment to require two separate inspections for framing and insulation, noting it wasn't in line with current industry standards and echoing Vogt's concern that it would bog down inspectors. He still voted for the amendments to pass first and second reading, but asked city administration "to do some more work" and find alternate wording for the changes related to inspections, before third reading.